Last year’s flight was the worst ever—none of us slept, our fellow
passengers hated us and the flight attendants kept asking if there was anything
we could do to stop Nico from crying.That
emergency was ended by showing him his favorite TV
show-- "Lion Guard"—on my smart phone.

What I didn’t know last year was that both kids were getting over Hand,
Foot and Mouth Disease (also called Coxsackie Virus).It hits children, usually under five, and
goes away quickly, but in adults it's worse, especiallyin older people with a compromised immune
system—a good description of me last year by the time we got on the plane. Soon
after arriving in Athens, I came down with fever, chills, blisters on hands feet
and face, and by the time we left Greece, all my fingernails had come off. (Eventually they grew back.)

This year’s flight to Athens has got to be better than last year’s,
during which Nico, sitting on my lap and on his Mommy’s lap, watched the same
Mickey Mouse cartoon five times.Now
that he’s over two, his parents have to pay for a seat for him.

Amalia will be carrying a very clever
travel aid designed for children between 40 and 80 pounds.It’s called a Boostapak.It looks like a backpack strapped to Amalia’s
back, but turned over, it serves as a booster seat in a plane or car (secured
by the vehicle’s seat belt.)Inside
theBoostapak, Eleni keeps a change of
clothes, a neck pillow in case Amalia falls asleep sitting up (Nico has one
too), a vomit bag in case she throws up (which often happens on long car
rides), a coloring book and some markers.

Every long trip with little ones is a learning experience for this Yiayia.Below in italics is an excerpt from a column I wrote in May
of 2015, when I traveled with Eleni and the two kids to Florida on the book
tour for her novel “The Ladies of Managua”, which she launched while on
maternity leave from her job. Back then, Amalia was three and Nico was only
seven weeks old. The things in my
emergency travel kit that applied to Amalia then are now more appropriate for
Nico, but I’m happy to say that, although he was breastfed until he was two,
he never had any interest in a pacifier, so losing the pacifier is no longer a
cause for panic.

(Written in Florida in 2015)

First emergency today: I pulled
out a bright red and orange Indian print cotton dress to wear in the Florida
heat. On the front was a white spot — the result of bleach or spit-up? From
Amalia’s set of mini colored markers,
which I carry for drawing pictures on napkins, I matched the color — the spot
is gone until the next washing.

Yesterday, I noticed that the
toes of my rope-soled espadrilles were starting to flap. Out came my mini-tube of Super Glue gel. I’ve used
the stuff for everything from temporarily reattaching an automobile part to
re-gluing acrylic fingernails.

Amalia has enjoyed more
restaurants at three than I had at 18. She behaves well, aside from bellowing
at the waiter, “I want bread and butter and water!” When her restaurant
behavior gets too annoying, I hand her my smartphone, which has a series of animal puzzles which I downloaded for free. She moves
pieces with her fingers and is rewarded with electronic balloons to pop. For a
real emergency, her mommy has kiddie TV programs downloaded to her phone.(Update:Nowadays Nico loves doing the animal puzzles
and Endless Alphabet while Amalia
has graduated to Berry Rush, Duolingo (for Spanish and English) and
Peppa Pig’s Paintbox all loaded onto
our phones.

Here are some more emergency
tools from my toiletry case:

Band-Aids. Nearly any kind of boo-boo
immediately feels better when you apply Band-Aids with a familiar character
like Dora the Explorer, Doc McStuffins, those sisters from Frozen. These character Band-Aids are more expensive,
but can provide hours of fun—with kids sticking them on willing family members.
Once, in a restaurant, a young mother complimented me on my colorful
“bracelets” applied by Amalia, adding that she often wore the same.

Entertainment. Each child has his own favorite
shows, whether it’s about trucks and trains, dinosaurs, or the beloved (by me
and Amalia) “Doc McStuffins”, a
girl who treats ailing toys while giving out health tips. Update:Amalia now scorns Doc McStuffins
as babyish, but longs to watch “P.J. Masks” and “Shimmer and Shine”—both of
which her parents don’t allow.But as I
told her the other day, “The reason God invented Grandmas is to let children
do things their parents don’t let them do--when the parents are out, or in case
of emergency.”Recently, when I was babysitting
the two, I let them watch an episode of a certain taboo cartoon, and when the
parents came in, Amalia stayed mum, but Nico, who rarely comes out with a whole
sentence, burst out with “I do watch P.J. Masks!” As his mommy observed, “Loose lips sink ships.”

One TV cartoon show that never fails to absorb both kids and yet has
their parents’ approval is “Lion Guard.”Nico knows the names of all the jungle characters, but I still can’t
keep them straight.

Diapers. Most toddlers, at a certain age,
become obsessed with the subject of poop. I generally travel with a flat,
fold-up plastic potty seat for both sanitary and convenience reasons. But
lately, Amalia scorns it, saying she can use a regular-sized toilet seat. When
I bought the delightful book “Everyone
Poops” by Taro Gomi and Amanda Mayer, she made me read it over and over.
As for babies in diapers like Nicolas, there seems to be a growing trend toward
cloth diapers and diaper services. Eleni and Emilio used them in both Manhattan
and Miami (better for the environment and for the kid, etc). But even the most
adamantly environmentalist parents have to use disposable diapers for travel —
so eco-friendly parents insist on Naty and/or Seventh Generation organic
diapers.

Snacks. Whether headed to the South Pole
or to Grandma’s house, we pack a supply of juice boxes and Amalia’s go-to
snacks—Cheerios and Goldfish. She’ll eat strawberry yogurt as long as there
aren’t chunks of strawberries(!) and it tastes best if Dora and Boots are on
the container. I make sure that her flip-top plastic water cup really is
watertight. (General rule for all things plastic—if it doesn’t have “BPA free“ printed on it, avoid it
like the plague. )

An extra pacifier. The essential in every Grandma’s
travel emergency kit is an extra pacifier. With first grandchild Amalia, I
didn’t realize that pacifiers come in different sizes, and a panicked dash to
the nearest pharmacy ended in disaster when I bought the wrong size. Wise
grandmas know to get one of those straps that attach the pacifier to baby’s clothing
and to carry an extra, just in case. (Update: No more pacifiers, hallelujah!One clever Mommy had a “farewell party” for
the pacifier, tied it to a balloon and let it sail away while everyone waved
good-bye.)

We also travel with a small
bottle of children’s Tylenol, a
thermometer for kids and small packets of hand
wipes and baby wipes.

And, of course, an iPad that allows us to access
programming for kids when needed. Parents inevitably quote the rule about
letting toddlers watch no more than one hour of screen time a day or their
brain will be destroyed. As soon as you, a grandma, realize that a TV set or computer
screen will turn your granddaughter into a hypnotized zombie and give you some
precious quiet time, you’ll start to feel like you’re her drug dealer. But
you’ll do it.

Now if only someone would invent
barrettes for toddler girls that actually stay in.

Update: I promise to report on how the nine hours to Athens on an airplane goes
this time, and if you have any tips on how to stay calm and in control when
traveling with children, please pass them on!

Tuesday, August 1, 2017

(I posted this exactly two years ago, both here and in the Huffington Post, but I think it's still as relevant today.)

On the occasion
of her 80th birthday, Maria Agustina Castillo returned to Sacred Heart in New Orleans,
where she attended high school under the strict supervision of the nuns
in the early 1950s.

“I feel like, as
women, we’re always trying to figure out the rules of the world around us.We’re raised to listen to the rules of
society, as opposed to men, and I sort of realized by the time you figure out
the rules, they’ve all changed.Older
women carry so many worlds inside them—both the societies that don’t exist
anymore and themselves at a younger age.I like how they (older women) are kind of uncensored.People of that age stop worrying about what
others think.”

Eleni’s book is about three generations of women in
Nicaragua and the secrets and tensions between them.Her favorite character is the grandmother,
Isabella, who was sent as a teenager from her home in Nicaragua to finishing
school in New Orleans where she learned things like how to get into a cab
properly, how to set a nice table, and how to make fudge.This character is based on Eleni’s Nicaraguan
husband’s grandmother, who is still alive today to dispense advice on proper
behavior.Isabella, in the book, is the
mother to Ninexin, a heroine of Nicaragua’s Sandinista revolution. She lost her
husband to a bullet, is devoting herself to building a new Nicaragua, and is
frequently reminded by her daughter Maria and others, “You couldn’t have been a
good revolutionary and a good mother.”As Eleni commented to the Telegram,
“Guilt is hard to escape, especially for women.You’re expected to do certain things, raise your kids in a certain way.”

Years before Eleni was born, I discovered the difficulties
of learning the rules of the game when I married a man from a close-knit Greek
family.I was a very naïve Presbyterian
from Minnesota.Nick and his sisters had
suffered starvation and worse during the Greek civil war and eventually escaped
in 1949, coming to Worcester, MA to join their father, a cook, whom nine-year-old
Nick had never met.As retribution for
engineering the escape of her children from their Communist-held Greek village,
Nick’s mother was imprisoned, tortured and executed. (He told her story in the
book “Eleni” which was later made into a 1985 film.)

Once I married Nick in September of 1970, I realized I was
involved in a game to which I did not know the rules, especially after our son
Christos was born ten months later.We
lived in an apartment in Manhattan but would drive nearly every weekend to
Worcester, MA, to visit Nick’s elderly father and his four older sisters.I was always breaking rules without realizing
it.At our son’s baptism, which culminated
in Greek line dancing while Nick’s father Christos balanced a glass of Coca
Cola on his head, I was wearing a long dress. In church, while my baby was being
dunked and tonsured, and holy oil was put on his hair, I would nervously, in
the front row, cross my legs.Every time,
my father-in-law would stand up, walk across the church and tell me in a stage
whisper that I was not supposed to cross my legs in church. (It was a long
dress, people!)Also, when I took the
baby home, while the party was still rollicking, I washed the holy oil out of
his hair.Big mistake!

Nick once told me, in the early years of our marriage, that
a Greek wife must always be ready to feed unexpected guests at a moment’s
notice.And I have never been a good
cook. But luckily he is.

Over the next 45 years I learned—to cook moussaka, to do
Greek dances, to speak Greek.And I had
two daughters, including Eleni—although having a son first, Christos, gave me a
major boost in the eyes of the Greeks. (The three requirements Nick spelled out
when we decided to get married, were 1. Quit smoking, 2. Name the first two
children after his parents and 3. Marry in his Greek Orthodox Church.)

Well I did all that—It helped that The New York Times sent our family to live in Greece for five years
while Nick was their correspondent in the Middle East. Along with our children, I learned the
language and the rules of the game. Years later, back in the U.S., when strange
odors emanated from my teenaged son’s closet, I wasn’t surprised to find in the
pocket of his church-going suit a bulb of garlic that one aunt had hidden against
the evil eye.It’s now an ordinary
occurrence to have my future read in my coffee grounds by one of Nick’s sisters
and, when things seem to all be going wrong at once, the kids and I regularly
ask another aunt to do an exorcism against the evil eye.

Eleni said in last week’s article that, as she was growing
up, I would point out rituals and
celebrations to her—the rules of our game. She became so interested in them
that she majored in folklore and mythology at Harvard, learning things she has
put to good use as an author of three books. (Her second, “Other Waters” was about an Indian psychiatrist in New York who
thinks her family has been cursed.)

It was very gratifying to learn that my early efforts to
discover the rules of the game sparked a lifetime’s education and writing
career in my daughter. (Well, the Telegram’s
reporter referred to me as “Jane” instead of “Joan” but whatever.) The part of
Eleni’s statement about older women that gave me the greatest encouragement was:
“I like how they (older women) are kind
of uncensored. [That’s me, for sure.] “People
of that age stop worrying about what others think.” [I hope that will be
me, as well!]

A Rolling Crone

After 40 years as a journalist, I turned 60 and decided to return to my first love--painting. I’ve exhibited watercolors and photographs in Massachusetts and have a slide show of paintings below. My photo book “The Secret Life of Greek Cats” can be purchased by clicking on the cover below.
I collect way too many things, but my great passion is antique photographs, from the earliest—daguerreotypes (circa 1840) up to 1900 (cabinet cards, tintypes.) I approach each one as a mystery to solve, and in unlocking their secrets have met some fascinating historic figures. For some of the stories, check the list of “The Story Behind the Photograph”.
My husband Nick and I live in Grafton, MA and recently celebrated our 41st anniversary. We have 3 children, now amazing adults. And on Aug. 26, 2011, we greeted our first grandchild, Amalía-- world’s cutest baby. But this blog isn’t about grandparenting (although photos of the grandkid sneak in). As it says up top, it’s about travel, art, photography and life after sixty. And crone power.